ExtremeTech Preview of Phoenix

Monday December 30th, 2002

ExtremeTech has a glowing preview of Phoenix. The article, which appears to be based on the 0.5 release, highlights Phoenix's small size and uncluttered interface. Tabbed browsing, multiple home pages and the search bar are discussed as well. They also included a screenshot of MozillaZine, which makes us like this review even more.

I think the problem with Mozilla isn't the features, but rather some design decisions that made the extra features expensive in terms of performance and user interface clutter. This is a criticism of Moz, but not of the developers. It's almost impossible to get everything right at the beginning of a project. The fact that projects like Phoenix and the calendar can emerge based on Mozilla is a testament to all the right decisions that the Mozilla architects did make.

The value in Phoenix is that it points the way to what can be done with the mainstream Mozilla. Divide it up into separate processes. Simplify the user interface. Keep the features, but not the bloat.